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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23749702">The Second Interrogation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite'>pallasite</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Behind the Gloves [168]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Babylon 5, Babylon 5 &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Backstory, Betrayal, Canon Compliant, Entrapment, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, Internal Corps Politics, Loyalty, Mention of Joan of Arc, Psi Corps, Telepath culture, Worldbuilding, telepaths</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:07:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,508</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23749702</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Bester's second interrogation in front of Director Johnston.</p><p>It's a trap.</p><p>"Are you a traitor, or are you a traitor?"</p><p>(Since canon presents this scene from Bester's POV, and he's a kid who doesn't know what's going on - even after later events unfold - I comment on the scene to show you all what was really happening.)</p><p>The prologue of <em>Behind the Gloves</em> is <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/10153487">here</a> - please read!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Behind the Gloves [168]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/677654</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Second Interrogation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590">here</a>.</p><p>I also have an <a href="https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/">ask blog</a>, a <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes">writing blog</a>, and a "P3 life" Tumblr <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life">here</a> with funny anecdotes. :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To back up a bit:</p><p>A year or so earlier, Bester had faced his <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22872814">first interrogation</a> in front of Director Johnston. The director, knowing that Bester was for some reason Vacit's favorite, wanted to kill him (presumably because he feared that as Vacit's favorite, Bester could grow up to be a threat to him).</p><p>But the teachers at the school were not going to let the director kill a student (Bester wasn't even chronologically fifteen yet!), and so Sandoval Bey, a senior teacher who long before had promised Vacit he would look after the boy - and who had personally saved Bester's life a week or so earlier in Paris - intervened and saved him from the director.</p><p>This move actually gave Johnston what he wanted even more - a way to kill Bey. Bester, though a potential future threat, was still a boy, whereas Bey was a present threat (as Johnston sees it). Bey had been perhaps the second closest to Vacit at the time of the old director's death, and for some years before that. (Natasha Alexander had been closest to Vacit, but she was up on Mars and in so many words, giving Johnston the finger from up there). He had absolutely no way to get to Natasha - yet.</p><p>So first, Bey.</p><p>Johnston made it clear to Bey that any future infractions on Bester's part will be held against him, Bey. But then from that point on, Bester's <em>squeaky clean</em>. Under Bey's guidance, he makes some almost friends, and starts to socialize in a more typical way with his peers. Johnston's plan to tie Bey to Bester's future bad behavior fails, because Bester doesn't have any future bad behavior.</p><p>On top of that, all the teachers continually speak glowingly of Bester. I read this as a combination of "yes, Bester really did straighten his behavior out" and "the teachers are trying to defend him against Johnston by emphasizing his good behavior."</p><p>So Johnston tries something else.</p><p>Most of this plot happens off-screen - Bey had caught wind of it months before the "second interrogation," which is why he ordered Bester to stay away from him. He knew he was living on borrowed time, and again, true to his word to Vacit, he does what he must (no matter how difficult) to save the boy's life - in this case, ordering him to break off all contact. Forever.</p><p>To contextualize this, Bester is an orphan who has never had any parental figure in his life until Bey, and now, only a year later, Bey in essence tells him, "you must never contact me again because the director wants to kill you - so I need to break off all contact with you to save your life." None of this makes any sense to Bester, who has been raised in an extremely sheltered environment and who has been kept entirely in the dark about the politics of the adult world, politics which have taken a sinister turn since Johnston took over the Corps. Suddenly he's hearing that the new director has been retiring, exiling, and even killing all the adults who had been close to Vacit? That the new director also wants to kill <em>him</em>, Bester, because he had been Vacit's favorite (even though he has no idea why)? He only met Vacit once, when he was about six. And I think he literally <em>doesn't even believe</em> that he had made telepathic contact with the director - across campus no less - at his graduation ritual, because the director had to be a normal (under the charter), and Vacit wasn't even <em>there</em>. It's so easy to dismiss as an illusion, a trick of the mind (especially given the traumatic mess of a few moments earlier). He's shocked when decades later, Brett tells him on Mars that Vacit had been a telepath. (Given how few people knew, Brett had to have found out directly or indirectly from Natasha... but that's another story.)</p><p>Johnston's plot to eliminate Bey was much more involved than the piece we see in the book, from Bester's point of view. All Bester knows is that one day, Bey takes him for a short walk, tells him <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22983073">what little he can</a> about the danger they are both in. It doesn't make sense to him, but he follows Bey's instructions.</p><p>And months pass, and he hears nothing from Bey, or about anything else in the world of adult politics.</p><p>And then one day, Johnston hauls Bester in front of him again, for what I think of as the "Joan of Arc" moment - the all-powerful director asks a "trick question" of a teenager, with life or death hanging on the teenager's answer.</p><p>Al Bester, however, is no Joan of Arc.</p><p>As the (apparently well-documented) story goes, at her trial, Joan was asked by the court: "Do you know whether or not you are in God's grace?"</p><p>This was a trick question - to say "no" would be to be admitting to be in a state of sin, and to say "yes" would itself be heresy, because Church doctrine held that no one could ever be certain of being in God's grace. Either way, she was dead.</p><p>Joan, however, cleverly dodged the question, saying, "If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest creature in the world if I knew I were not in His grace."</p><p>Bester didn't perform so well.</p><p>-----</p><p>Deadly Relations, p. 112-114:</p><p>          "Mr Bester."</p><p>          Al had never heard his own name sound so threatening. The director maintained his familiar, thin smile as he appeared to review something on the desktop display.</p><p>          "Sir."</p><p>          "I've heard good things about you, of late. You may know that many of your teachers had concerns about you. I did myself, after that little incident in Paris. I'm very pleased to say, no one has had the slightest complaint about you since that time."</p><p>          "Thank you, sir. I believe I learned a valuable lesson."</p><p>          The director nodded. "You will graduate the Minor Academy this year?" [It's the fall, and Bester is sixteen.]</p><p>          "Yes, sir, if I meet the requirements set by the Corps."</p><p>          "Oh, I'm sure you will have no problems there, Mr. Bester. All of your instructors seem quite certain of you."</p><p>          "That's gratifying to hear, sir, but of course I take nothing for granted."</p><p>          "No, I'm sure you don't." He paused, took a small tumbler half full of what appeared to be water, and relaxed back into the arms of his padded chair. "Have you seen Dr. Sandoval Bey, recently?"</p><p>           Al felt it then, a faint touch, a prickling of the skin. Someone, somewhere, was scanning him, a very light scan, like a business teep.</p><p>[This means that someone is looking in on the meeting, because for a lower-level telepath to be scanning him, he or she would need line of sight. It's also <em>really odd</em> - the director is talking to a student, one who isn't being charged with anything whatsoever, and Johnston has a buisness telepath scanning the student. What we see here is that Johnston is already playing "divide the conquer" with telepaths, selecting choice "laters" he can trust to be "loyal" to him <em>personally</em> (against other telepaths), and rewarding them with favors while he uses them against telepaths he considers to be "threats" or "enemies". Ironically, its Bey's loyalty to the Corps that keeps from him from just outright killing Johnston (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4yzkefot3c">with his brain</a>). That's part of the tragedy here - just about anyone on that campus could have done it, <em>but they don't</em>. They think that the danger will pass, or they can escape it. They don't recognize how bad things really are. They fear (quite reasonably) that if anyone took such drastic action, things would only get worse for telepaths as a whole, across the Earth Alliance. And they have these little things called <em>morals</em>.]</p><p>          "No, sir. Not in months."</p><p>          "You two spent quite some time together. You even went on a raid with him, I seem to remember. No, no - don't fear to admit it, he cleared it through this office."</p><p>          "So he told me at the time," Al replied.</p><p>          "Do you know why he took such an interest in you? He advocated for you at the hearing, took you under his wing. You two met regularly for months."</p><p>          "I can't say, sir. He saved my life in Paris, I suppose that had something to do with it. He thought my education was incomplete."</p><p>          "Really? He said that? In what way does he feel the Corps is not doing its job as educator?"</p><p>          Al felt, suddenly, as if he had walked into a trap. "That's not what I meant, sir. It wasn't the Corps that failed, but myself. The lessons Dr. Bey thought I should learn were there for me all along - I just didn't learn them."</p><p>          "And what lessons might those be?"</p><p>          "I-" Al realized that it was hard to articulate what Bey had given him. "He taught me to appreciate other people. To work with them, to try to understand their point of view."</p><p>          "I see. And this Blip you chased together, this Fatima Cristoban - did he teach you to understand her point of view? Did he teach you compassion for rogue telepaths?"</p><p>          Al's mouth suddenly felt very dry. There was something - some subtext to this conversation - that was leaking from the director. He tried desperately to shut it out. "I - she was confused, sir. Very confused. I suppose I did feel sorry for her."</p><p>          "Tell me, Mr. Bester," the director said, very softly. "If you had to choose between a rogue telepath and a - mundane - who was loyal to EarthGov and to the principles of the Corps, which would you choose?"</p><p>[And here is the trick question. Bester cannot say "the rogue telepath," because the director would use that as evidence of "treason" against him, and use that to execute him, as he'd hoped to execute him before. But neither can he say "the mundane," because <strong><em>THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS JOHNSTON'S "MUNDANE THAT IS LOYAL TO THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CORPS." </em></strong>I cannot emphasize this enough.</p><p>What the director really means is <strong><em>himself</em></strong> - he wants all telepaths to declare personal loyalty to <em><strong>him</strong></em> (like the unnamed telepath watching the meeting through a peephole) - even though of course this <em><strong>does</strong></em> go directly against the principles of the Corps.</p><p>The correct answer would have been, "My loyalty lies with the Corps alone, not with any human being, either normal or telepath. Only the Corps is Mother and Father."</p><p>(And it's not lost on me that Johnston intentionally calls himself a "mundane," as if trying to trap Bester into "slurring" him while apparently pledging loyalty to him. "See what those telepaths <em>really</em> think of us, even as they claim to be loyal?" Yeah.)</p><p>In the Corps, all telepaths are considered a family - <em><strong>all</strong></em> telepaths, even rogues, even those who go astray, even those who attack and kill other telepaths. All telepaths are a family - and telepaths have lived by and died for that principle for generations. That is what Bey understood (and tried to teach Bester), and it's this principle that cost him his position as Chief of MetaPol after the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/13466985">Dexter Raid</a>. They <em>could</em> have destroyed the caves from above, without sending troops inside. They didn't. They held their fire, hoping they could capture even the Dexters alive. And many, many people died as a result.</p><p>And isn't it ironic that what the books try to portray as "a prolonged, dramatic fight against the Evil Corps Forces, where the Dexters and Walters are able to kill many of them but are ultimately defeated" is <em>actually</em> telling the story of the Corps <em>intentionally holding fire and using non-lethal means</em> for as long as possible? (So evil!)</p><p>Therefore, for Bester to say "the rogue telepath, because all telepaths are family, even if they go astray" would be used as evidence of "treason" by Johnston, but to say "powerful mundanes, of course - screw my fellow telepaths!" would be <em>actually</em> against the (pre-Johnston) values of the Corps!]</p><p>          "I am loyal to the Corps, sir. A rogue is a rogue."</p><p>          "I see. A commendable attitude. Do you think Dr. Sandoval Bey shares that attitude?"</p><p>          "Of course, sir." But he felt a flicker of doubt at that. Bey might - just might - under the right circumstances - put the telepath first.</p><p>[Because see above... though as we already know, Bester doesn't really understand Bey's feelings. This is what he didn't understand when Fatima died - the <em>system</em>. He's been raised in a very sheltered, everything is "black and white" world, and fed mundane-written propaganda from birth. Normals put up the statue of Karges and made up the story about him. Normals wrote the Psi Corps student handbook. Bester was never even taught <em>in a Psi Corps school</em> how telepathy actually works, because it might muddy the normal-written party line on telepaths "serving normals" as perfect little devices. He doesn't know the real history about Crawford. He knows nothing about the Senate oversight committee, or about all the mundane politics that infect everything he knows and loves. Bey understood the system. Bester doesn't.</p><p>And Bey understands what the "principles of the Corps" really mean, more than can Bester at this age, and certainly more than can a mundane director who hates telepaths and wants absolute dominion over them - and whom the Senate is obliging in that desire.]</p><p>          And he knew, with sinking heart, that his doubt had been heard and noted by someone he could not see.</p><p>[And again, it's all a set-up, because there is nothing at all "against the values of the Corps" in how Bey feels. If there was, could he have been <em>Chief of MetaPol</em>, and probably the most respected man in the Corps even after he was forced to step down? <em>Senior Psi Cops and administrators still defer to him</em>. He still has an office in the administrative building, even though he's an instructor and Psi Cop (and I think still Station Chief of Geneva, at least in name only). He is widely loved, respected, and even revered by Psi Cops and others in the Corps all across the Earth Alliance. He personally built MetaPol into what it is.</p><p>And this is why Johnston hates him - he's more "Corps" than anyone. Bey doesn't merely "believe" this or that - to many, he literally <em>is</em> the values of the Corps. Killing him is key to Johnston's plot to consolidate power his power, to crush and terrorize telepaths into submission. Johnston, despite his trick question, is not "loyal to the values of the Corps" - he is literally trying to <em>destroy</em> the values of the Corps.]</p><p>          "Very well. That will be all, Mr. Bester."</p><p>          And as he left, he felt the same flash of hatred he had felt all those years ago, when he had first seen this ice-eyed man. And there was something else - a danger, a threat. Not to himself, but to Bey. And it was mixed with a feeling of terrible triumph.</p>
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